Let's vote to uphold our nation's values

As I travel, I can feel something. If you imagine the ideology of Americans as a bell curve, our core values are secure in the middle with the giant lump of busy, normally disengaged, distracted people. They are voters and nonvoters on the center right and center left, which is a vast majority, in a country where the far-left and far-right wings usually do all the talking and shouting. Every so often in our history, that giant stirs. The murder of little girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963 stirred that giant, which led to bipartisan support in Congress to pass the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts that changed our country for the better.

I feel the giant stirring. The awakening is slow, but it is underway. Torches and death in Charlottesville. Children in cages at the border. The lying, misogyny, racism and attacks on the rule of law from our president. These things poke the giant. It takes time, but the American people are stirring. They always do. And when they awaken, these fevers break very quickly. Mr. Meacham reminds us that Joe McCarthy disappeared almost overnight, after dominating the country and cowing other leaders for four years.

What the rest of us have to do is not become discouraged or complacent, or be provoked into reacting in ways that betray our values. It falls to all of us to awaken the giant so that we shorten the period before we resume our upward march.